Pink Feathers in AP&Q

Yesterday my copy of Australian Patchwork and Quilting (Vol. 20 No. 8) arrived, containing my quilt Pink Feathers.

I've only shown peeks of this before, but here are a whole heap of photos, because I really love this quilt. There's not a lot of piecing (really it's just the 12 Palm blocks) but the quilting really transforms it. I definitely designed this quilt with the quilting (especially the circular feathers in the border) at the front of my mind.

The parallel lines in the border are done in matching threads - white on the white and black on the black, to highlight the hot-pink feathered circles.

I got the idea for this border from the excellent Kim Brunner class I took at AMQF late last year, and was desperate to try it out.

The photo below is of the back of the quilt:

The parallel lines were all marked, but quilted free motion - I've not worked out a way of using rulers with my machine they way it's done on longarms, and I really didn't feel like turning the quilt 180degrees after every line! They're far from perfect, but the effect is exactly what I wanted.

The centre motif is an adapted Patsy Thompson stencil.

The original stencil was just a little too big for the centre square on the alternating points, so I took out a small section.

I echoed the motif using clear monofilament, hoping it wouldn't show on either the black or the white, and that worked well. I used the same monofilament to stipple the remaining area around the central motif and echo the curved cross-hatched segments on the palm blocks.

I couldn't leave them unquilted - they looked too puffy, because of the relatively dense quilting over the rest of the quilt.

Given there were 12 palm blocks requiring the curved cross-hatching, I made my own stencil for it. teh stencil actually only had half the lines - all nesting curves. For each one I marked the lines, then turned the stencil around to mark the other half.

I'm please with the effect, although I suspect I could have quilted something else which would have been just as effective and taken rather less time - the stencil took a while to make and use. Again, the quilting was free-motion quilted.

Why not have a go at making your own version of this quilt? All the instructions are in the magazine, and I'd love to see what you can do!

Pink Feathers has been doing a little travel to a few quilt shows with AP&Q/Express Publications, but it'll be home soon, so I can give it to its new owner.